GOP plays Steyer card vs. Dems

Republicans and their allies are going all out to turn Tom Steyer into a Koch-like liability for Democrats.

The San Francisco hedge-fund billionaire’s pledge to spend $100 million or more to sway this year’s elections has made him a target for a throng of right-leaning groups that are rifling through his life history and chasing his corporate money trail in search of evidence of hypocrisy or self-dealing.

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Meanwhile, they’re using online ads, op-eds and Senate floor speeches to try to make Steyer a synonym for the worst form of big-money politics, accusing him of buying Democratic support for a climate-activist, anti-Keystone agenda that could turn off battleground voters.

It’s the GOP flip side to liberals’ long-running attacks on the vast political influence network of industrialist billionaires Charles and David Koch — which itself is aiming to raise and spend a reported $290 million this year. While the anti-Steyer opposition research has yet to bear real fruit, the second part of the strategy is well underway, as seen in GOP attacks on Democrats like Colorado Sen. Mark Udall for consorting with the liberal benefactor.

“Frankly, being associated with Steyer and having been to his house and dined on his grass-fed beef is going to be a liability for these Democrats,” said Phil Kerpen, president of the conservative group American Commitment and a former top aide at Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. He said his group is considering running television ads targeting Steyer.

But Steyer, 56, has nowhere near as much household name recognition as the Kochs. And he’s pushing an issue — action on climate change — that has enjoyed a strong majority of public support in recent polls. So bring it on, his supporters say.

“It’s like being attacked by the tobacco industry,” said Chris Lehane, a longtime Democratic operative and one of Steyer’s top advisers. “It only elevates your profile and confirms that everything you’re doing is right.”

The anti-Steyer strategy takes many forms — from floor speeches by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to op-eds in conservative outlets like The Wall Street Journal and a $100,000 online ad campaign by Kerpen’s group lambasting Udall and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for their association with the billionaire. After 30 Democratic senators held an all-night series of speeches about climate change in March, the Republican National Committee and conservative news outlets quickly spread the message that Reid had “rented” the Senate floor to Steyer (who wasn’t there).

A public relations firm that represents several industry clients also approached POLITICO in recent weeks with opposition research on Steyer, while several other firms with industry clients regularly flag stories to reporters that paint Steyer in a negative light.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Republicans are making a feeble attempt at equivalence between Steyer and the Kochs.

“I think [Republicans] are a bit touchy about the extent to which they have become both economically dependent on the Koch brothers for election money and at the same time obedient to the Koch brothers’ agenda,” Whitehouse said. “And so to try to offset that charge, they’re trying to create a false equation on our side so that people looking at it say, ‘Oh, it’s a tie. They both have billionaires.’”

Steyer is only the latest in a series of big liberal donors, including George Soros and Warren Buffett, to fall under conservative attacks. But Steyer is perhaps tailor-made to be the GOP’s nemesis, with his brash personality and his success in emerging as one of the most high-profile environmental donors in U.S. politics. His super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, helped propel Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to victory last year, and it aims to make climate change a top issue in both this year’s midterms and in 2016.

Still, some Democrats facing tough races may be trying harder to keep their distance from Steyer these days. Udall, who attended a February fundraiser at Steyer’s home, declined to discuss the billionaire’s involvement in the Colorado Senate race last month, saying: “We’re going to have a lot of outside actors in the state, but my focus is going to be on the campaign.”

Conservatives have also tried to tie Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes to Steyer, at one point pouncing on an erroneous AP story that said she had met with Steyer at an April gathering of the liberal group the Democracy Alliance. The AP later ran a correction after a Grimes spokeswoman said the candidate had not met with Steyer (though Grimes met with other liberal donors). But Republicans and their allies had already publicized the Steyer angle.